The Guardian reports that an Air France Airbus A330 is missing over the atlantic.

Air France Airbus A330

Various sources say 228 people are onboard.

The Air France corporate website is being slammed and is almost non-responsive.

Keep them in your prayers.

EADS says the “missing aircraft, registered under the number F-GZCP, was MSN (Manufacturer Serial Number) 660, delivered to Air France from the production line in April 2005. The aircraft had accumulated approximately 18,800 flight hours in some 2,500 flights. It was powered by CF6-80E1 engines.”

Air France released this statement today:

Air France expresses its deepest sympathy to the relatives and friends of the passengers and crew who were on board AF flight 447 on 31 May 2009, which disappeared somewhere between Rio de Janeiro and Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

Air France is doing its utmost to provide support to relatives and friends: counselling with physicians and psychologists as well as specially trained Air France volunteers has been set up at the airports of Paris-Charles de Gaulle 2 and Rio de Janeiro.

Air France has also established a special toll-free number for the attention of relatives and friends of passengers who may have been on board. They can use this number to obtain information on whether or not a member of their family or friends was on board.

France has threatened the United States with a carbon tax if it does not sign the Kyoto Protocol:

NY Times—President Jacques Chirac has demanded that the United States sign both the Kyoto climate protocol and a future agreement that will take effect when the Kyoto accord runs out in 2012. …

But he warned that if the United States did not sign the agreements, a carbon tax across Europe on imports from nations that have not signed the Kyoto treaty could be imposed to try to force compliance. The European Union is the largest export market for American goods. …

Muslims in Paris protesting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed had two unwelcome guests join them Saturday.

Two men from La BAF, protesting in favor of Denmark and the cartoonists, and in favor of free speech, joined the Muslim protest. One man displayed a Danish cartoonist’s fake severed-hand complete with drawing pencil:

La BAF—But very quickly, the crowd began to surround and threaten us. Some started a passionating debate: on one side, those supporting an immediate stoning, on the other side, those who wanted to avoid a public massacre. Meanwhile, the police forced us to leave and took us away in a police van to let us go far away from the demonstration. (Thanks to them)

Many demosntrators had started to move the demosntration behind us, to follow us in the street where the police had brought us. Some where yelling “Allah’u Akbar” and had visibly decided to catch us. …

France has threatened to use nuclear weapons against any state that launches terrorist acts against it:

photo credit: Screen grab from video of President Chirac at Landivisiau Naval Air Station

The Tocqueville Connection— President Jacques Chirac for the first time Thursday raised the threat of a nuclear strike on any state that launches “terrorist” attacks against France.

He also said France’s doctrine of nuclear deterrence has been extended to protect the country’s “strategic supplies”, taken to mean oil.

“Leaders of any state that uses terrorist means against us, as well as any that may be envisaging — in one way or another — using weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would be exposing themselves to a firm and appropriate response on our behalf,” he said. …

Mark Steyn has an excellent piece this morning on the civil war in France:

Chicago Sun-Times—Ever since 9/11, I’ve been gloomily predicting the European powder keg’s about to go up. ”By 2010 we’ll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,” I wrote in Canada’s Western Standard back in February.

Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. . . .